


Trial at the Moriya Shrine

by communistkasen (bagoum)



Category: Touhou Project
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-26
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-17 03:14:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29710773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bagoum/pseuds/communistkasen
Summary: An unscrupulous prosecutor corners a defendant with only the force of bad logic.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	Trial at the Moriya Shrine

**Author's Note:**

> cw. blood, discussion of homicide/suicide
> 
> sort of a sequel to https://archiveofourown.org/works/29693214

"Hey, Reimu! Pass me the pork!"

"Yeah, yeah, I got it."

We were all sitting around a table inside the Moriya Shrine. Originally, our banquet had been planned for by the lake, but it had rained this morning and the ground was wet, so we had decided to move it indoors. Honestly, it was a little cramped. And noisy. But the insides of the Hakurei Shrine are much smaller, so I can't really complain. Maybe I should invest in a larger shrine... if I had any money.

Kasen, sitting right next to me, clapped her hands twice and addressed the entire room. "So, as it turns out, I have to ask for some advice. Recently, I heard of some news pertaining to Makai. Is anyone familiar with the place?"

Marisa spoke up, eager to share her knowledge. "Yeah. Ye can get there by heddin through the moun'ins behind Reimu's place. There's a strange lil' warp gate or summin', ze. An'--"

Marisa, I love it when you whisper lies in my ears, but don't make me look bad in front of others, please! "Hey! There isn't any weird path in the mountains behind my house! What are you talking about?"

Marisa looked at me with confusion, and I understood quickly that she hadn't been lying. "Nah, Reimu, there defs is. I've been there. Ain't you been there too?"

Yukari spoke up authoritatively. "It's true. There is a path to Makai from behind the Hakurei Shrine. But I sealed it off a while ago. Today, unless you want to challenge my seals, you'd have to get direct help from either me or the god of Makai to come and go."

"Ahh... that god..." Kanako scratched at her chin in an effort to recall a distant memory. "I think... she called herself a creator god, right? Because she birthed Makai from her imagination, or something. If that's true, then she's something different from us Gensoukyou gods. None of us could just create worlds like that."

Suwako, sitting right by her, protested, "Does anyone even know if she's actually a god? Or does she just call herself that?"

"In that case, should we not first ask that of our host here? Kanako, are you _really_ a god?" Miko's arrogant laugh echoed from across the room. 

Kanako's fist smashed down on the table, and several nearby plates seemed to momentarily jump. "What the fuck do you think you're saying, you shitty h--"

Miko's voice fell down to a cold, unemotional tone, but it still had enough force to silence Kanako. "Do not take that the wrong way. All I say is that, unlike Suwako by your side, you are not one of the eight million. This is well known. So in what respect do you call yourself a god?"

Kanako clearly wanted to rebut this question, but as she scratched furiously at her head, she was unable to come to an answer, and so remained silent. It was then Kasen who, with a conspicuous smile and narrowed eyes, pointed her gaze at Byakuren and spoke. "Byakuren, aren't you quite familiar with this topic? You must have picked up a few things on your sabbatical in Hokkai."

Byakuren's brow furrowed, and rather than immediately reply, she brought a cup of tea up to her mouth and sipped at it. The entire room was looking at her. She sighed with frustration, and responded with a grimace, "If you desire it, great _hermit_ , I will share my paltry knowledge of the creator gods."

She shifted her seating-- by the few inches of height she seemed to gain I assume she had moved into seiza-- and then recommenced. "The easiest way to put it is to say that the god of Makai is the god of another religion. Suwako and the eight million are the gods of Shinto. The Jade Emperor-- and I really am thankful that she keeps herself locked up in Heaven-- is a god of Taoism. Okina's lineage is difficult to trace, but she is nominally some kind of Buddhist god, though she shouldn't be. The T-shirt weirdo... I think she said she's a god of Aeolia, and her nemesis is a god of the Middle Kingdom. The old dragon god is shared among many religions. I do not know what Kanako _is_ , but I have heard she is trying to become the patron deity of science. And the god of Makai... is something akin to the monotheistic gods from overseas, who have the power both to create and to destroy, and exist on a different plane of being from us. It is a bit strange. We can sit here and eat dinner with all these entities who we call gods-- do not take this as a reason to invite the Jade Emperor!-- but we could not share a meal with the god of Makai. From her perspective, we are like characters in a story. You can write a story, you can read a story, you can be amused by a story, but you cannot interact with the lives recorded on the page on equal footing. There is a fundamental incompatibility."

Miko once again broke out into laughter. "So she made Makai, but she cannot make friends with anyone in Makai? Because she alone is in some different dimension? Hahaha! How lonely must she be!"

Byakuren shrugged. "It's not something to laugh about, but yes. It is quite lonely to be a creator god. Because there is nobody else like you. That's why she remade M--"

"It is also said--" Kasen interrupted Byakuren with unnecessary precise enunciation, in an attempt to move the discussion along. "that the normal gods and youkai share their red blood with humans, but the veins of the creator gods flow with boiling black blood, something like the blazing tar dripping down the marbled walls of Ashoka's Hell. Byakuren, you are quite familiar with Ashoka, are you not? What do you make of the story of his conversion to Buddhism?"

Byakuren glowered, but she was unable to respond with anger to Kasen's innocent question. Innocent? Was it an innocent question? If you went by tone of voice alone, she sounded more like a prosecutor in a court of law, closing in on a defendant using bad logic and false evidence. But what crime was Byakuren being accused of? Was Kasen trying to pull a gotcha about some point of Buddhist historiography? 

Kasen glanced at me, and, seeing the confusion on my face, forced the topic once more. "This means that the color of one's blood--"

With a loud and rushed voice, Byakuren spoke over her. "And there are other taxonomies discernible by blood color, even among the youkai. Like the oni, whose blood is dyed the same bright blue hue as that of the giant spider-crab." Huh, I'm not sure why she would say that. There are no onis here today, so why does it matter what color of blood they have?

Smiling, Kasen picked up a knife in her left hand, holding it overhand-- the way you would hold it if you wanted to stab someone through the base of the neck. It's a particularly cruel way to kill someone-- rather than cut the major arteries by the neck, you break open the windpipe and essentially suffocate them by preventing their breaths from travelling down to their lungs. For a victim put in such a situation, the best thing to do would be to pull out the knife and instead use it to cut their own carotid arteries, since bleeding to death from the neck is far more quick and pleasant than death by hypoxia. However, the longer you wait to do that, the weaker you get, and the less likely you are to succeed. It's kind of like harakiri. In the earliest forms of harakiri, you were supposed to stab through your throat after cutting open your stomach, but it turns out that when your guts are spilled all over the floor, it's not easy to wield a knife. So a lot of people ended up dying a very slow and painful death while trying desperately to kill themselves. That's why it's cruel. And that's why, when the practice was standardized, they invented the position of the kaishakunin, who would behead the victim after they had cut open their stomach, which was, all considered, far less gruesome than watching them bleed to death. I suppose that before the spellcard rules were invented, the loser of a duel in Gensoukyou would have to do harakiri. Maybe Yukari would know what those days were like.

Kasen spoke, and I could only hope blindly that this history lesson she had once given me was unrelated to what she was about to do with that knife. "If only Suika weren't absent today, we could confirm that story. As for me--" with a quick slash, she cut through the bandages covering her right palm, and raised it above an empty cup lying on the table. As she held her hand open, palm face-down, bright red blood began dripping from it, _plop! plop! plop!_ as the droplets crashed against the little remaining liquid at the bottom of the cup. "My red blood marks me as human, youkai, or standard god, I guess."

Nobody spoke, and the sound of Kasen's dripping blood was all that was audible for several long moments. I saw Yukari and a few others staring in confusion at Kasen's red blood-- I'm not sure if they were expecting something else. She's human, why is it surprising that she bleeds red? Maybe they're just amazed by her audacity. Then, Yukari, with a frown, said, "Blood is a biohazard, but as long as these knives aren't shared and are sterilized afterwards, we should be fine." She shook off a glove and, with a separate knife, likewise cut through her palm. Pulling Kasen's cup over, she let her blood drip in full view of the rest of the room. It was a deep, dark crimson. "To nobody's surprise, I am either a human, a youkai, or a normal god." _Plop! Plop! Plop!_ With more liquid in the cup, the sound of dripping blood was louder.

"Heh. Y'all fools need a knife ta draw blood? Lemme show y'all how'ts done, ze." Marisa grabbed the cup and yanked it towards herself, then placed her thumb to her teeth and bit down. When she pointed her thumb out over the cup, shining vermilion blood dripped from it. "If ya gotta pull outta knife e'ery time ya wanna cas' some _blutmagie_ , y'aint gonna last ver'long 'sa magician, da★ze."

"Oh?" Kasen's eyes opened wide, and she leaned forward over the table. "Marisa, you're proficient in blood magic?"

"Thas' right." She licked at her thumb, staunching the blood, and then puffed out her chest. "And thas' why I'm the strongest magician 'round these parts, ze. Any ol' magician can make a giant laser, but other'n me an' my teacher, ain't nobody can make a blood-empowr'd giant laser. She always had ta carry 'round a giant knife to draw 'er own blood, thoe. And thas' why she got offed. I was warnin' her, ze. _Teach, ya better learn how to draw yer blood wiout a knife, or that purple-hair bitch sgonna get ya sealed up one day★ze._ "

That's... pretty cool. I didn't actually know she was using blood magic to empower her techniques. I had often seen her biting her finger while fighting, but I always assumed it was just a nervous tic of some sort, like biting your nails. Pretending to be an idiot when you're actually so capable... ah, Marisa, that's your very own form of gap moe. Take my blood too, Marisa...

\--Though Kasen faced Marisa and spoke to Marisa, I couldn't help but feel like her words were yet directed at Byakuren. "An old friend of mine studied blood magic. She was looking for a technique to extend the human lifespan. Do you know anything about that, Marisa?" 

Marisa deflated, and pondered this question for a moment. "I've seen some stuff on it, but ya can't do it wit' red blood, ze. Ya need... Uh... I think it was... somethin' real hard ta find... uh... it was... black blood? Yeah, 'twas black blood, definitely. ...Ah!" She recoiled slightly upon realizing the connection, which was immediately apparent to the rest of us as well. 

Yukari raised her finger and summarized what we had all intuitively come to understand. "So a human can extend their lifespan by consuming the boiling black blood of a creator god. I suppose that, at least temporarily, their blood would run black as well."

Silence. It was an interesting hypothesis. But at the same time, in the absence of any such gods, it would be hard to test it. So it, ultimately, mattered little. But nobody was sure how to break away from this uncomfortable topic, so we all sat there for a few quiet moments, waiting for someone to do something.

Suddenly, a pink rope wrapped around the cup and dragged it across the table. Wait, no, that's not a pink rope. It's Suwako's tongue. The cup stopped in front of her, and then her tongue zipped back into her mouth with the violent speed of an automatic tape measure. With a self-satisfied voice, she croaked out, "Little magician, your technique is yet inefficient! If you hold your broom in one hand and your eight-trigrams furnace in the other, you will not have the opportunity to bring your thumb to your mouth without weakening your defenses! So watch and learn!"

Suwako opened her mouth wide, and I could see deep on the roof of her mouth, farther inwards than where you would expect to find teeth, two short fangs pointing downwards with a slight backwards tilt. I couldn't tell well as there wasn't much light within her mouth, but they didn't seem as white as normal teeth. I wasn't sure what they were, but I could hear Marisa muttering gleefully from across the table, "A frog god's vomerines... I could make some real good shit wit' that, ze..." Then Suwako rolled her tongue up and laid it upon her lower row of teeth, like sushi on a cutting board. She raised three fingers, then let one drop. Two. She let another drop. One. When the last finger dropped, her jaw forcefully closed, and with a violent squelch, her upper teeth cut deep into her tongue. She opened her jaw again, then let dangle down over the cup her tongue, from which dripped pinkish cherry-colored blood. 

Marisa cried out in amazement. "Thas' wicked! I shoulda' thoughta that! Shit, I can't wait ta geddit into my rotations, ze!"

Kasen once again spoke, with a wide smile spread across her face, and an accusative tone so similar to Yukari's that I had to doubt if it was really the kind flower hermit who was sitting next to me and uttering these words. "Human, youkai, human, and standard god. I guess that covers all the categories we have access to today. But there's one thing I'm curious about. Byakuren, you are human, but you are much older than any human can be. The other humans of your era, Miko's group, have long since died and now resurrected as saints or hermits or youkai. However, you never died. You are still human. But no human can be you. Is your blood... actually red?"

I suddenly understood what Kasen had been trying to say all this time. _Look closely at her blood. Vampire. Much older than any human._ In other words... she was suggesting to me, and many others here, that Byakuren had kept herself alive by feeding on the blood of a creator god. In that case, was Marisa's little talk about blood magic also part of her plan? Or was it just a coincidence? Maybe she had prepared several different ways to bring up the topic of blood magic? It doesn't matter. What Kasen was claiming out loud was that, if Byakuren took part in this game, her blood would run black. It wouldn't be a big deal if Byakuren turned out to be a youkai or something, but that wasn't the significance of black blood. Nobody in Gensoukyou should have black blood. But Byakuren might...?

Everyone's stares bore holes into Byakuren, who continued to nonchalantly sip at her tea. But the angel would not pass until she spoke. So she let down her cup again, and, sighing, only said this: "You must understand, Kasen, that my body is not as strong as yours. Though I may look like this, I am, as you say, quite old. My age has cursed me with not only anemia, but also such a low platelet count that it is difficult for me to stop bleeding once I start. The afflictions of old age are in large part unique to humans, so the youkai here may not understand my reluctance. Thus, though I would like to play your game, I must refrain for the sake of my health. I should not still be alive, but as long as I am, I will hold tightly to this life. Because there are people who will not permit me to die, and it is not by my own will that my blood yet flows."

Her last words, strangely ominous, floated uninterrupted in the air for a few moments, before Yukari, wearing a liar's smile, brought a clean end to the discussion. "So, is anyone planning to see the Choujuu Gigaku concert tomorrow?" With that, the normal conversation kicked back into full gear, and the noise of many overlapping laughs and shouts, eager to at least momentarily forget what had just happened, once again filled the room, though Byakuren's words did not leave.

\---

Not long later, Kasen and I were walking back to the shrine together. She didn't normally go this way from the Moriya Shrine, but we had things to talk about.

"So, Reimu, do you understand what I told you about Byakuren?" With her hands behind her head and a loose gait, she asked me this question the same way she would ask me about my math homework.

I had understood, but I was still a bit frustrated about Kasen's approach. "I get it. And I think everyone else got your accusations too. But why did you have to make a fool of her in front of everyone there? Do you have something against her?"

Kasen frowned, and I could see a tint of anger on her face. "I hate her. So I have no qualms about doing that to her in public."

That's an unexpected response. No, not really. What would have been unexpected is Kasen saying she had no reason. If anything, this is the only reason I could have expected her to give. "Why? Isn't she just a Buddhist monk? Maybe you don't get along with her, but why would you _hate_ her?"

Kasen turned to me and looked directly into my eyes. When I looked back at them, I was struck by the overpowering sense that I was gazing into the depths of oblivion, that if I kept staring into them I would be sucked into the abyss, never to escape. But I couldn't turn my eyes away. Since when was Kasen's gaze this powerful...?

"I hate her precisely because I worship the Buddha. To me, her practice is heresy. You know the name of the Tachikawa-ryuu, don't you? Much of what was written about them was likely slander. But I could take every word used to describe them, and justly apply it to Byakuren. She is a demon. And because she is a demon, you cannot understand her motives. And I think she admitted that herself today."

Her tone, direct and aggressive, worried me. "Kasen, isn't that a bit excessive...?"

Turning away, she shrugged. "Yes. And I hope I'm wrong. But at the same time, I already know that most of what I have said is correct. And today, you and many other denizens of this realm have shared in that knowledge, and that suspicion. Ignorance is bliss, Reimu. It is easier to not know and to not doubt. But you are the Hakurei shrine maiden. You do not have that option."

With a slow exhale I tried to sift through everything I had learned today. There was still... one thing that was strange about this all. "But... Byakuren was only unsealed recently. How do you know her so well? You couldn't have been alive back when she was originally sealed."

With a pained smile and a quiet voice, she slowly responded, "You will know the answer to that question very soon. But not today." Then she suddenly began walking backwards, and momentarily passed out of my sight. When I turned around to look for her, she had disappeared.

I walked alone the rest of the way home.


End file.
